Dark Matter Matters

photo: "The Dark, the Cold, the Life" by Tyler Malone aka The Second Shooter

Dark matter seems to be what isn’t there to be seen in between what we see.

They dub it dark since you cannot detect it, nor can they inspect it with telescopy.

Yet, while it can’t be descried, it cannot be denied for equations that irk to work.

Should dark matter matter, would dark matter matter a titter or twitter, a transmitter flitter, a spatter or smatter—this transparent matter— to other than fans of the science news or hopefuls for lists of physics who’s whos?

Like other matters of matter that matter a pitter or patter, a skitter or scatter, it has to be plumbed, summed up and summed down, verified, clarified, ere it’s dumbed down.

One cannot spot it with unaided eyes. Oh, may the way to explore it be wise!

Some sons and daughters of Mother Earth’s waters and sands of the dreamlands of Father Time are trying to fathom celestial history, master its mystery, reason and rhyme.

Physicists hunt for dark matter, to move it with particle accelerators, to prove it exists as suspected, from data collected, with outcome expected, eureka! projected…

But let us remember that they call it dark.

How can one discern an invisible quark?

They’re searching to learn of this strange seeming stuff; for knowledge is power— there’s never enough…

It’s thought our universe has a whole lot of it. Those who suppose it give info they’ve got of it…

Unlike normal matter it plays hide and seek, and so much of it’s interactively weak…

Speaking of such massiveness subatomic, its acronym is ironically comic…

With or without this WIMP snicker factor, there’s still a detractor or two around… Though a gamma ray clue may have been found in the center of our own Milky Way— dark matter collisions, that is to say.

A curious mind always digs and delves. Yet, are we not getting ahead of ourselves?

High fly the dreams of the capped and gowned, to be world-renowned, laureate-crowned…

Breakthroughs in deep outer space astound…

While here on the ground, horrors abound!

Be it phantom or really elusively there, dark matter inferred, if ever laid bare, when we’ve been interred, with nary a word to mark our swift passage, might have the last laugh, with ‘what fools were mortals!’ for our cenotaph—

‘Nature and Nature’s laws lay hid in night: Humans unlocked them, but all was not light.’

•••••••

A few notes about the content of the story…

In astrophysics, weakly interacting massive particles or WIMPs, are hypothetical particles serving as one possible solution to the dark matter problem.

On the tombstone of Isaac Newton, it says, ‘Hic depositum est, quod mortale fuit Isaaci Newtoni,’ which is translatable as ‘here is deposited what was mortal of Isaac Newton’.

On the monument adjacent to Isaac Newton’s tombstone, these famous words of Alexander Pope appear– “Nature and Nature’s laws lay hid in night: / God said, ‘Let Newton be!’ and all was light.”

~ Harley White

editors note:

There’s life in the negative space but it doesn’t breathe. It’s see because of what’s absent. What we feel because it’s too big not to be there. Out there, everywhere, there’s something as crushing as an empty heart. ~ tyler malone

Born in Southern California, Harley White double-majored in English and Psychology. She lived in Big Sur for 12 years, where she wrote a Trilogy of Musical Theater works based on fairy tales. Later she moved to Granada, Spain, with her second husband. The tragedies referred to in her book called, The Autobiography of a Granada Cat – As told to Harley White, are the deaths in the 1990s of her only two, adult children from her first marriage. She attributes her survival and present wellbeing to her practice of Nam Myoho Renge Kyo. She contributes her efforts to books and a website project of various Buddhist writings of Nichiren Daishonin, which can be seen here. In addition, she has her own page called "Poetry with a Buddhist Theme" at that website here.

Some of her literary offerings include poetry, songs, stories, short and long, and works based on fairy tales. She loves classical music, playing the flute... all animals, especially cats... and much, much more. She is a born word-lover and is now well into a massive opus dealing in fairy tales, musical theater, poetry, and awakenings. She has written, among other genres, stream of consciousness, surrealistic theater of the absurd, and mixed media works of interior monologues, dialogues...

Below are some links for the book, The Autobiography of a Granada Cat – As told to Harley White, which is available in Spanish as well...